I am looking for a way to have a "Singleton" module over multiple worker role instances. I would like to have a parallel execution model with Queues and multiple worker roles in Azure.
The idea is that would like to have a "master" instance, that is let's say checking for new data, and is scheduling it by adding it to a queue, processing all messages from a special queue, that is not processed by nobody else, and has mounted blob storage as a virtual drive, with read/write access.
I will always have only one "master instance". When that master instance goes down for some reason, another instance from the one already instantiated should very quickly be "elected" for a master instance (couple of seconds). This should happen before the broken instance is replaced by a new one by the Azure environment (about 15 min).
So it will be some kind of self-organizing, dynamic environment. I was thinking of having some locking, based on a storage or table data. the opportunity to set lock timeouts and some kind of "watchdog" timer if we can talk with microprocessor terminology.
There is general approach to what you seek to achieve.
First, your master instance. You could do your check based on instance ID. It is fairly easy. You need RoleEnvironment.CurrentRoleInstance to get the "Current instance", now compare the Id property with what you get out of RoleEnvironment.CurrentRoleInstance.Role.Instances first member ordered by Id. Something like:
var instance = RoleEnvironment.CurrentRoleInstance;
if(instance.Id.Equals(instance.Role.Instances.OrderBy(ins => ins.Id).First().Id))
{
// you are in the single master
}
Now you need to elect master upon "Healing"/recycling. You need to get the RoleEnvironment's Changed event. Check if it is TopologyChange (just check whether it is topology change, you don't need the exact change in topology). And if it is Topology Change - elect the next master based on the above algorithm. Check out this great blog post on how to exactly perform events hooking and change detection.
Forgot to add.
If you like locks - blob lease is the best way to acquire / check locks. However working with just the RoleEnvironment events and the simple master election based on Instance ID, I don't think you'll need that complicated locking mechanism. Besides - everything lives in the Queue until it is successfully processed. So if the master dies before it processes something, the "next master" will process it.